Noam Chomsky - Conversations with History

(brilliant music) - Welcome to A Conversation with History, I'm Harry Kreisler from the Institute of International Studies. Our guest today is Noam Chomsky. Noam, welcome to Berkley. Where were you born and raised? - I was born in Philadelphia in 1928. I stayed there until I finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, then I went to Harvard for a couple of years on a fellowship and then went to graduate school. When I was done with that, I went to MIT and I've been in Boston ever since. Around Boston since about 1950. - Were your parents Hebrew grammarians and taught Hebrew school? -My father was a professional Hebrew scholar and his main work was Hebrew grammar, and my mother was a Hebrew teacher.

My father ran the Hebrew school system in the city of Philadelphia. My mother taught there. She later taught at a Hebrew university. There is a university of Jewish studies, a graduate university of Jewish studies, that is the university where he taught. But they were all part of what amounted to a kind of Hebrew ghetto, Jewish ghetto, in Philadelphia. It was not a physical ghetto, it was scattered throughout the city, but a cultural ghetto. -And was Hebrew the language spoken at home? - No no? - Second. I was at the bottom. So, for example, when I was eight or nine years old, say on Friday night, my father and I would read Hebrew literature together. -And looking back, how do you think your parents shaped your perspective on the world? - Well, those are always very difficult questions to answer, because it is a combination of influence and resistance, which is difficult to separate.

I mean, certainly the background has shaped the kinds of interests and tendencies and directions that I've followed, but it was... it was independent. I mean, I think the most direct influences actually came from other parts of the family. - Mmm, please go ahead. - Well, my parents were immigrants and coincidentally ended up in Philadelphia, but my mother from New York and my father from Baltimore. When she came in 1913, for some reason, her family went to Baltimore and my mother's family, from another part of the Pale of Settlement, came to New York. And there were two different families, there was the New York family and the Baltimore family, and we were in the middle in Philadelphia.

So naturally we came out from behind, but close. The families were totally different. Now, the Baltimore family was ultra-Orthodox. In fact, my father told me that they had become more Orthodox when they came here than in the shtetl, the small town in Ukraine where they came from. In general there was a tendency among some sectors of immigrants to intensify cultural tradition, probably as a way of identifying themselves in a strange environment, I suppose. So that was that family. The other part of the family, my mother's, was mainly working class Jewish. Very radical, the Jewish element had disappeared.

It was the 1930s, so they were part of the ferment of radical activism that was going on in the 1930s in every way. And of all of them, the one who really influenced me a lot was a political uncle, who was an extremely interesting person. He came into the family when I was seven or eight years old and became a big influence. I married my aunt. She grew up in New York, also from an immigrant family, but she grew up in a poor area of ​​New York. In fact, he himself never made it past the fourth grade.

He was, you're on the street, you know? These criminal records, all kinds of things. What is happening in the lower class ghettos of New York? It happened that he had a physical deformity, so he was able to get a kiosk thanks to a compensation program that was carried out in the 1930s for people with disabilities. He had a newsstand on 72nd Street in New York. He lived nearby in a small apartment. And I spent a lot of time there. That kiosk became an intellectual center for emigrants from Europe, many Germans and other emigrants who came, and he was a very educated person.

As I said, I never made it past fourth grade, but he is perhaps the most educated person I have ever met, self-taught. Without giving the whole story, he ended up being a lay analyst in a riverside apartment in New York, but the kiosk itself was a very lively intellectual center with professors of this and that arguing all night, and working at the kiosk was a lot. of fun. - So the newspapers and world events were mixed with ideas, almost like a cafeteria without coffee? - Yes, newspapers were like an artifact, so for example I was thinking for years that there was a newspaper called Newsinmira.

The reason is that when people came out of the subway station and ran past the kiosk, they would say, "Newsinmira." Well, I heard it like that and gave them two tabloids, which I later discovered are the News and the Mirror. (laughs) I realized that when they picked up Newsinmira the first thing they opened was the sports page. - I see I see. (laughs) This is a picture of the world from eight years ago. But yeah, there were newspapers there, but that was kind of the background to the discussions that were taking place. And then, through him and other influences, I became involved in the current radicalism of the '30s.

And that was very much part of the Hebrew-based, Zionist-oriented life, this is Palestine, pre-Israel, oriented to Palestine. And that was a good part of my life. I later became a Hebrew teacher for Zionist youth, combining it with radical activism in various ways. That's actually how I got into linguistics. - One of the formative influences, as I understand it, in this period for you, was reading George Orwell. And also in terms of events, really in addition to the Depression, the Spanish Civil War. Tell us a little about that mix. - It came from the other side. Orwell's great book, in my opinion, his best book, Homage to Catalonia, I think was first published in 1937, but it was suppressed.

A couple of hundred copies were published. In both England and the United States, it was essentially suppressed. The reason was that it was very anti-communist and in those days that didn't sell. During World War II it was totally suppressed, because you couldn't, you know, there was Uncle Joe. So what he was doing didn't sell. I think his book finally reached the public, this is from memory so maybe the dates are wrong, but I think it was around 1947 or 1948, with an introduction by Lionel Trilling, and it was presented as a Cold War document in that moment. . I mean Orwell, who was already dead, would have hated it.

And that was when I found Homage to Catalonia, but the Spanish Civil War had interested me much before. - And in fact you wrote, your first essay was when you were ten years old about the Spanish Civil War. What did you say then and what do you think now about how that event and your response influenced you? - Well, the article, as you said, was ten years old. (laughs) I'm sure I wouldn't want to read it today. But I remember what it was about, because I remember what caught my attention. This was just after the fall of Barcelona.

Fascist forces had conquered Barcelona, ​​which was essentially the end of the Spanish Civil War. The article was about the spread of fascism throughout Europe. So he started talking about Munich, Barcelona and the expansion of Nazi fascist power, which was extremely terrifying. And then, just to add a quick word about my personal background, it turns out that we were, for most of my childhood, the only Jewish family in a mostly Irish and German Catholic neighborhood. A kind of lower middle class neighborhood, very anti-Semitic and quite pro-Nazi. I mean, it's obvious why the Irish hated the British, it's not surprising the Germans did.

But I remember the beer parties when Paris fell, and the sense of menace of this black cloud spreading over Europe was very frightening. I was able to capture my mother's attitudes, especially because she was terrified by it. And she was also in my personal life, because she saw the streets. Interesting, for some reason, which I don't understand to this day, my brother and I never talked to our parents about this. I don't think they knew we lived in an anti-Semitic neighborhood. But on the streets, you know, going out and playing ball with the kids or trying to walk to the bus or something, it was a constant threat.

And it was precisely the kind of thing you didn't talk to your parents about. You knew that for some reason you didn't talk to them. Until the day they died, they didn't know. But there was this combination of knowing that this cloud was spreading around the world and capturing, in particular, the attitudes of my mother, very upset by it, my father too, but more self-conscious, and knowing from the uncles and aunts, some of the background and experiencing it on the streets in my own daily life, that made it very real. Anyway, in the late 1930s I became quite interested in Spanish anarchism and the Spanish Civil War, where all this was going on at the time.

It was just before the World War broke out, but a kind of microcosm, what was happening in Spain. When I was old enough to get on a train by myself, around 10 or 11, I would go to New York for a weekend, stay with my aunts and uncles, and frequent anarchist bookstores around Union Square and Fourth Avenue. There were small émigré bookstores. Really interesting people, in my opinion they looked like they were in their 90s, maybe they were in their 40s or something like that. (laughs) These people who were very interested in young people, wanted young people to come.

I spent a lot of attention talking to these people, about this true education. And then when I wrote the article, it was with that background. It was a long time before I heard of Orwell. - These experiences that we have described, you said that led you to linguistics but they also led you to your vision of politics and the world, and you know, you are a libertarian anarchist, and when one hears that in how the problems are posed in this country, and you know why there are often so many misperceptions, because of the things you've written.

Help us understand what that means; In other words, it doesn't mean you're necessarily in favor of chaos or lack of government. - Well, remember, the United States is like out of the world on this issue. Britain is to a certain extent, but the United States is like Mars. So here the term libertarian means the opposite of what it always meant in

history

. Libertarian, throughout modern European

history

, meant socialist anarchist. It meant that the socialist movement, the labor movement and the socialist movement were divided into two branches, approximately. A statist, an anti-statist. The statist branch led to Bolshevism, Lenin, Trotsky, etc.

The anti-statist branch, which included the Marxists, let the Marxists, Pannekoek, Rosa Luxemburg and others merge, more or less, in an amalgam with a large current of anarchism, in what was called libertarian socialism. So libertarian in Europe always meant socialist. Here it means ultra, you know, Ayn Rand, or Cato Institute or something like that. But that's a special American usage, which has to do with a lot of very special things about the way America developed, and this is part of it. There it meant, and always meant, to me, socialist and the anti-state branch of socialism, which meant a highly organized, completely organized society, nothing to do with chaos.

But based on democracy in all its aspects. That means democratic control of communities, of workplaces, of federal structures, built on systems of voluntary association that extend internationally. That is traditional anarchism. At least anyone can have the say if they want, but it's mainstream, probably mainstream traditional anarchism, and it has roots, you know, going back to the United States, it has very strong roots in the American working class movement. . . So if we go back to, say, the 1850s, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, this was in the area where I live, in the textile mills of eastern Massachusetts, etc., the people who worked in those mills were partly young women. leaving the farms.

They called them factory girls. So the women come to the farms, they work in the textile plant. Some of them were Irish immigrants in Boston and that group of people. They had an extremely rich and interesting culture. Sort of like my uncle, who never made it past the fourth grade, was very educated and read modern literature. They did not worry about European radicalism, which had no effect on them, but they did worry about the general literary culture of which they were a part, and they developed their own conceptions of how the world should be organized. They had their own newspapers.

In fact, the freest press period in America was probably around the 1850s. In the 1850s, the scale of the popular press, that is, run by factory girls in Lowell and so on, was the scale of the commercial press or even larger. And these were independent newspapers, with a lot of interesting studies on them, now you can read them. Spontaneously, without any background, I never heard of Marx or Bakunin or anyone else. Now they developed the same ideas. They thought that, from their point of view, what they called wage slavery, renting out to aowner, was not very different from chattel slavery, over which they were fighting the Civil War, and it must be remembered that in the mid-19th century, that was a common opinion in the United States.

For example, it was the position of the Republican Party. It was Abraham Lincoln's position. It was not a strange vision, that there is not much difference between selling and renting. So the idea of ​​renting oneself, that is, working for wages, was degrading. It was just an attack on his personal integrity. And they despised the industrial system that was developing, which was destroying their culture, destroying their independence, their individuality, forcing them to be subordinate to their masters. There was a tradition of what was called republicanism in the United States: we are free people. The first free people in the world.

This was destroying and undermining that freedom. This was the core of the labor movement everywhere, and included in it was the taken-for-granted assumption, quote: "Those who work in factories should run them." In fact, one of their main mottos, I'll just quote it, was that they condemned what they called the new spirit of the age. "Gain wealth, forgetting everything but yourself." (Laughter) That idea, the new spirit, that you should only be interested in gaining wealth and forget about your relationships with other people. They considered it simply a violation of fundamental human nature and a degrading idea. Well, that grew into a strong, rich American culture, which was crushed by violence.

The United States has a very violent labor history. Much more than Europe. Now it was annihilated over a long period, but with extreme violence. When it recovered in the 1930s, that was when I personally came to the end of the matter. Immediately after World War II it was crushed. Then it's already forgotten. But it's very real, and look, I don't really think it's been forgotten, I think it's just beneath the surface in people's consciousness. - And this is an ongoing problem, and it's something that arises from your scientific work as well, mainly the degree to which stories and traditions are forgotten, and in fact, really defining a new position often means going back and finding those older traditions . - Things like this are forgotten in intellectual culture, but my feeling is that they are probably alive in popular culture, in people's feelings, attitudes and understanding, etc.

I mean, I know that when I talk today to, say, working-class audiences and I talk about these ideas, they seem very natural to them. I mean, it's true, no one talks about them, but when you mention it, I mean, the idea that you have to rent to someone and follow their orders and that they own it, and that you work there, and you build it, but you don't own it. , is a highly unnatural notion, and it is not necessary to study complicated theories to see that this is just an attack on human dignity. - So, by leaving this tradition, allowing yourself to be influenced by it and continuing to believe in it, what is your notion of legitimate power?

Under what circumstances is power legitimate? - Well, the core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate unless it proves to be legitimate. So the burden of proof always falls on those who claim that some authoritarian, hierarchical relationship is legitimate. If they can't prove it, then they should dismantle it. Will you ever be able to try it? Well, it's a heavy burden of proof, but I think you can handle it sometimes. So, to take a home example, if I'm walking down the street with my four-year-old granddaughter and she starts running into the street and I grab her arm and pull her back, that's an exercise of power and authority, but I think you can give a justification for it.

Obviously what the justification would be. And maybe there are other cases where it can be justified, but the question that should always be asked, for most of us, in our minds, is "Why should I accept it?" It is the responsibility of those who exercise power to demonstrate that it is legitimate in some way. It is not anyone else's responsibility to prove that it is illegitimate. It is illegitimate by assumption. If it is a relationship of authority between human beings that places some above others, then that is illegitimate of course. Unless you can give a solid argument to prove that it is correct, you have lost.

It is something like the use of violence, let's say, in international affairs. The burden of proof is very heavy for anyone who calls for violence. Maybe sometimes it can be justified, I'm personally not a committed pacifist, so I think yes, sometimes it can be justified. So I thought, in fact, in that article I wrote in fourth grade, I thought that the West should use force to try to stop fascism, and I still think that way. But now I know a lot more about it, I know that the West was actually supporting fascism, supporting Franco, supporting Mussolini and so on, and even Hitler.

I didn't know it at the time, but I thought then, and I think now, that the use of force to stop that plague would have been legitimate, and ultimately, it was legitimate. But you have to give an argument for it. - Is there less of a burden of proof when you look at weaker power entities, looking at the powerless, basically the burden of proof is less for them? - Not the same. - Same. - I mean, let's say, people living under military occupation, or under racist regimes, etc. Now they have the right to resist; in fact, everyone in the world except the United States and Israel believes they have the right to exist.

If we look at the UN resolutions. - Talking about Palestine now, yes. - Palestine or South Africa, I mean, if you look at the major United Nations, there are important UN resolutions on terrorism. One from 1987, which denounced the plague of international terrorism and asked everyone to do something to stop it, was approved with two negative votes, the United States and Israel. The reason was exactly this, they explained it to me. It said that "Nothing in this resolution "will prejudice the right of peoples "to fight for independence against racist and colonialist regimes and foreign military occupation." That referred to South Africa and Israel.

Therefore, the United States opposed , because he opposed it, does not grant the right of people to fight against racist and colonialist regimes and foreign occupation. The United States and Israel are alone in that. When the United States votes against a resolution, that no longer belongs to the. history, so you don't read about it, but it is there. The war on terrorism is not new, it is old, the United States is the only one that opposes it. Now, I think the world is right about this and. that the United States is wrong to resist racist and colonialist regimes and foreign military occupation, but then comes your question: Is there a right to use violence to do that?

Well, no, I think the burden of proof is on you? who say that there is the right to use violence and. This is a difficult burden to face, both morally and tactically, and, frankly, I think it can very rarely be faced. - I'm curious, I think I've read interviews where you've tried to separate your focus on science from your focus on politics, but I'm curious if you'll ask the question again, let me ask you. So how does your approach to the world as a scientist affect and influence your approach to politics? - Look, I think studying science is a good way to enter fields like history. - Well. - The reason is that you learn what an argument means.

You learn what evidence is. You learn what makes sense to apply and when. Which is going to be convincing. In a way you internalize the modes of rational inquiry, which turn out to be much more advanced in the sciences than anywhere else. On the other hand, you know, applying the theory of relativity to history will get you nowhere. - No, no, yes. (laughter) - It's a way of thinking, and I at least try, with the success that others have in judging, to use the way of thinking that you would use in the sciences for human affairs, and I think it's a good idea to do so. so.

As for other connections, there may be some but they are quite remote. If you think about the central notions of what I called anarchism, which as I say, is deeply rooted in popular traditions around the world, I think for good reasons it is based on a certain conception of, if you try to take Apart from this, it is based on some kind of conception of what Bakunin once called the instinct of freedom. That people have an instinctive drive to free themselves from domination and control, and I think that can't be proven, but it's probably true. The core of the work that has interested me in language is also interested in a kind of human freedom.

The cognitive ability to create indefinitely and its roots in our nature. Now, historically people have made a connection between this. So if you look at, say, the 18th century Enlightenment and the Romantic period, this connection was made explicitly. So if you read Rousseau, or Wilhelm von Humboldt and others, the connection between human freedom in the social and political realm, and human freedom in the creative use of cognitive abilities, particularly language, they tried to make a connection. Now if you ask, "Can this be connected on a scientific level?" The answer is no. It's just a kind of parallel intuition that doesn't link empirically, but maybe one day could if we knew enough. - You said somewhere, I think in this new book, about power, "You can lie or distort the history" of the French Revolution for as long as you want, "and nothing will happen." Propose a false theory in chemistry, "and tomorrow it will be disproved." - Yes, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Nature is harsh. You can't play with Mother Nature, she is a lover of difficult tasks. Then you are obliged to be honest in the natural sciences. In soft fields, you are not obliged to be honest. Nobody is going to undermine, I mean, there are standards, of course. On the other hand, they are very weak, and if what you propose is ideologically acceptable, that is, it supports the systems of power, you can get away with it to a large extent. In fact, the difference between the conditions imposed on the dissident opinion and the dominant opinion is radically different.

I could give you concrete examples, if you wish. - Yes do it. - Well, then, for example, if I write about terrorism, let's say that I have written about terrorism and I think you can demonstrate without much difficulty that terrorism largely corresponds to power. I don't think it's very surprising. But more powerful states are involved in more terrorism overall, and the United States is the most powerful, so it is involved in mass terrorism by its own definition of terrorism. Well, if I want to establish that, I have to present a lot of evidence and I think that's a good thing, I'm not opposed to that.

I think anyone who makes that claim should be held to very high standards, through extensive documentation of the internal secret log, historical record, etc., and if they ever find a comma out of place, someone should call them out on it. So I think those standards are fine. Now, let's say you play the conventional game. So, for example, Yale University Press has just published a volume called The Age of Terror. The contributors are leading historians, many of them from Yale, the most prominent people in the field. When you read the book The Age of Terror, the first thing you notice is that there is not a single footnote.

There is not a single reference. These are statements that simply don't come to mind. Some of the statements are sustainable, others are unsustainable, but there are no criteria, no intellectual criteria are imposed. The reviews of the book are very favorable and complimentary, and maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, I mean, I think a lot of it is wrong, and demonstrably wrong, but it doesn't really matter. You can say whatever you want, because you are supporting power and no one expects you to justify anything. For example, if I were, say, in the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and they asked me, "Do you think Gaddafi is a terrorist?" You might say, "Yes, Gaddafi is a terrorist." I don't need any evidence.

Suppose I said that George Bush is a terrorist. Well, then I would be expected to present evidence. "No, you can't say that." - So you are not isolated, at that moment. - You see, and in fact the structure of the news production system is that no evidence can be presented. In fact, it even has a name. I learned it from Nightline producer Jeff Greenfield, it's called conciseness. They asked him in an interview somewhere why they didn't have me on Nightline, and his response was two answers. First of all, he says, "Well, he speaks Turkish, no one understands him." But the other answer was: "It lacks concision." Which is correct, I agree with him.

Now, the kinds of things I would say on Nightline, you can't say them in one sentence, because they deviate from standard religion. If you want to repeat religion, you can get away with it between two commercials. If you want to say something that questions religion, you are expected to give evidence, and you can't do that between two commercials, so you lack conciseness and therefore can't speak. I think it's a tremendous propaganda technique. Imposing conciseness is a way to virtually guarantee that theparty line is repeated over and over again and nothing else is heard. -And that's why a lot of his work in the area of ​​politics has really focused on what you call the manufacturing of consent.

Mainly, the framing of the issues, the way the issues are put off the table for discussion, and in the end what their work suggests is that by focusing on that and coming to understand it, then there is hope of really understanding the issues. problems we face. - Oh yes, actually, I should say, the term consent manufacturing is not mine, I took it from Walter Lippmann, the leading public intellectual and leading media figure of the 20th century, who thought it was a great idea. He said, "We should manufacture consent." This is how democracy should work. "There should be a small group of powerful people, "and the rest of the population should be spectators" and you should force them to give their consent by "regulating their minds." That's the main idea of ​​democratic theorists and the relationship industry publics and so on.

So I'm not making it up, I'm just borrowing his conception and telling other people what they think. But yes, that's very important, and yes, I think common sense is enough, no. special, like my uncle, to unravel this and see what's really going on. I don't think it's hard to figure out that the United States is a leading terrorist state; I think it's obvious - and when you read his arguments, really, what he's making is. Pretty simple. I mean, if I can paraphrase, if you suddenly called Iraq a rogue state in the '90s, well, what did you call it in the '80s, and were they doing the same thing? do it?

And this is your criticism of American foreign policy. -Well, you know, I think, I mean, if George Bush tells us, as he did last week, and Tony Blair tells us, in this case, that we cannot let Saddam Hussein survive because he is the most evil man in the world world. In the story, he even used chemical weapons against his own people, I agree with that. But stopping there gives hypocrisy a bad name. It must be added: "Yes, he used chemical weapons "against his own people", with the support of dad Bush, "who continued to support him even after that, "knowing what he was doing, "helped him develop weapons of mass destruction. destruction, "welcomed him as a friend and ally, "gave him abundant help after all these crimes." Unless you add that, it's just, like I said, giving hypocrisy a bad name.

Well, no one does that. You can read the comments and the scholarly opinion and the prominent figures, and they just stop, "they used chemical weapons against their own people." Now, this is not difficult to understand. I think you can explain this to children in school. You know, it takes a lot of effort on the part of the educated classes to keep people from knowing these things, and that takes dedication. Now, this is an example, it's a typical example. In the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a great chorus of self-adulation in the West about how we are entering a new era of history in which enlightened states bring humanitarian ideals to the world for the first time in history, following principles and values, and the test.

That's why we are bombing Serbia. Well, at that same time, the same people were actively supporting terrorist atrocities that went far beyond any accusation against Milosevic in Kosovo. In fact, I just returned from the site of one of them, southeastern Turkey, where mass atrocities were being committed. - Where the Turkish government is committing atrocities against the Kurdish people. - Yes, that is true, but I would say that the United States government is committing atrocities. - Providing help. - Providing practically 80% of the weapons, and in an increasing flow as the atrocities increased, providing support, blocking criticism. The press is helping by not reporting it, and in fact, even more surprising, Turkey is being praised here as a model of opposition to terrorism, specifically for carrying out some of the worst terrorist atrocities of the late 1990s with our aid.

Well, you know, that's an impressive contribution of polite culture. It wouldn't be easy. It takes effort to do this kind of thing and it's not difficult to explain. I can explain it in two minutes. I can even give you the documentation, if you want. - Now, if we were on the Council on Foreign Relations, which we are not, it would be argued: "Well, Turkey has to fit into a broader strategic vision..." of the world, "in which they are a secular Islamic state modernizer". Or not an Islamic state, they are a state that has Islam within its population.

What would be your response to that? - That is why we must help them expel two or three million people from their homes and destroy thousands of villages. - No, don't go there. - Well, that's the question. In fact, I think we are doing Turkey a disservice by doing this. We are supporting the most reactionary currents in Türkiye. Like I said, it was just there. I was there talking about these things, and the popular support for opposing the military regime is overwhelming. We are supporting the military regime, we support, we prevent its modernization and development.

In fact, that is happening in much of the world. But even if it were true that we were helping modernization, that in no way justifies participation in some of the worst acts of terrorism, or worse, I don't know if it's worse, in parallel, praising them as a model for countering terrorism by carrying out a massive terror. And you can generalize this. You know, let's say, let's go somewhere else, Indonesia. When Indonesia pursued an independent path in the 1950s and early 1960s, the United States strongly opposed and in fact attempted to divide Indonesia in 1958. Finally, a military coup occurred with the help of the United States in 1965.

The coup He massacred perhaps a million people, no one noticed. Mostly landless peasants. He was welcomed here with total and unbridled euphoria. It was described accurately. So, New York Times, it was an amazing bloodbath, Time magazine, you know, a boiling bloodbath and praise. He was praised because what he called the Indonesian moderates, that is, those who carried out the massacre, were turning the country into a client state of the United States. Well, since then, from '65 to '98, when the Indonesian leader, one of the worst, something like Saddam Hussein, one of the worst criminals of the modern era, was lavishly praised and supported as a wonderful person, the Clinton administration called He was our kind of guy, because he was serving American interests while carrying out enormous massacres and compiling one of the worst records of atrocities in the world.

What happened to that in the story? Well, you know, it's history, but it's not what you teach people in high school, like you should in a free country. That is the task of intellectuals. Be careful to make sure no one understands what is happening. It is an important task. - You really believe that there are two types of intellectuals. One, the one who serves, let's say, power, and is rewarded, and the other, the one who is left out, who basically calls a spade a spade. - I mean, we all agree with that when we talk about enemies.

So when we talk about the Soviet Union, we all agree that there was a difference between the commissars and the dissidents. Now, the commissars were the inside guys who propagated state propaganda, and the dissidents are a very small group on the fringes who tried to call a spade a spade. And we honor the dissidents and condemn the commissioners. - Because that's what they were doing to our adversaries. - And when we turn around at home, it's the complete opposite. We honor the commissioners and condemn the dissidents and, furthermore, this goes back to all history. You know, let's go back to classical Greece and the Bible.

So who drank hemlock in classical Greece? Was he a commissioner or a dissident? (laughter) When you go to, let's say, the Bible, you know, you read the biblical record, there are people called prophets, prophets just means intellectuals, they were people who gave geopolitical analysis, moral lessons, that kind of thing. Today we call them intellectuals. There were the people we honored as prophets, there were the people we condemned as false prophets. But if you look at the biblical record, at that time it was the other way around. The flatterers in King Ahab's court were the ones who were honored, and those we call prophets were thrown into the wilderness and imprisoned.

You know, that's how it's been throughout history, and it's understandable. Power does not like to be undermined. - There is an important point here that I want to highlight, and that is if you compare our performance against Serbia at a time when we are not doing anything regarding East Timor or Indonesia, or various other places. - It's not that we're not doing it... - Well, it's not that we're doing the wrong thing. - We are intensifying the atrocity. - But I guess the really interesting thing is that, as part of the self-deception created by the media, we forget that we are doing it in a place and we place it where it would be very easy to do something about it, that is, stop military aid.

While in other areas, for example in Serbia, well, if you start bombing, what are the consequences for innocent people? - That's another question. Which is independent of what we should have done in Kosovo. Maybe we can guess it on its own, but what it does show is that whatever we have done is not humanitarian. Just take a look at everything else that's going on and you'll see it. So what should we have done in Kosovo? Well, here you have to look at the record, and the record is interesting and the intellectuals suppress it. So there is an enormous amount of literature on this, and if we look at that literature, we will notice that something is systematically omitted, namely the actual record of what was happening.

And we have a voluminous record, from the State Department, from the British defense system, from NATO, from the UN. As far as I know, there is only one printed book that reviews that record: mine. And of course the book is doomed, because it revises the record. What the record shows is unequivocal. Until shortly before the bombing, the British were the toughest element in the coalition. Internally, now he is released, then he was internal, he considered the guerrillas as the main source of atrocities. This is after the Racak massacre. - They would be the Albanian guerrillas. - Yes, they said they are the main source of atrocities.

What they are trying to do is provoke a disproportionate Serbian response, which they did, which would then attract the West. Now, I personally don't think so, but it's the British. We know that until the bombing nothing much changed. It was an ugly place, I mean, you know, these are not good guys. The Serbian occupiers were doing cruel things, and not on the level of what we were doing elsewhere, but pretty bad. But nothing changed until the bombing. When the bombing was carried out, it was expected to lead to atrocities. No wonder you start bombarding people and they react.

And so it was, I mean, if you look at Milosevic's trial, it is for crimes committed after the bombing, with one exception, but... - The bombing carried out by NATO. - After the bombing, with threat of invasion, exactly as expected. The atrocities increased and they began to expel the population. Now, those are crimes, no doubt, this guy is a major criminal, but the crimes were caused by the NATO bombing. Now what you read is, well, we had to bomb to return the Albanians to their homes. Yes, except they were kicked out of their homes after the bombing.

Now, there were some displaced before, but the big expulsion was after the bombing. Before that, the West saw it as a kind of guerrilla trying to provoke atrocities and responses, and responses. That's the description. Well, if you don't tell the truth, you can still decide it was right or wrong, but unless you at least look at the facts, you're not even in the real world. I mean, for example, it is a fact that we should analyze and we can ask: was there an alternative? It was a bad place, no doubt. Was there an alternative to violence?

Were there diplomatic alternatives? Well, if you look back you will see that, in fact, I wrote at the time, it seems that there are diplomatic alternatives. I mean, Serbia had a position, NATO had a position, if you really look at the result after 78 days of bombing, it is a compromise between those two positions. NATO gave up its most extreme demands, the Serbs gave up its most extreme demands, and there was a kind of compromise. Could that have been achieved without the bombings and atrocities? Well, you can argue that it was. But remember, the burden of proof is on those who say to bomb.

They try to put the burden of proof on others. They can not. It is those who use violence who have the burden of proof. - Not everyone is Noam Chomsky and they cannot produce an extraordinary work on these topics. So what is his advice to people who have the same concerns, who identify with the tradition you come from, and who want to actively oppose these?policies? What do they need to do to make it productive? - The same as the girls at the Lowell textile factory 150 years ago. They joined others. Doing these things alone is extremely difficult, especially when you work 50 hours a week to put food on the table.

Join others, you can do many things. It has a great multiplier effect. I mean, that's why unions have always been at the forefront of developing social and economic progress. They bring together the poor and the workers, allow them to learn from each other, have their own sources of information and act collectively. That's how everything has changed. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the solidarity movement, the labor movements. The reason we don't live in a dungeon is because people have come together to change things, and now there is nothing different than it was before. In fact, only in the last 40 years have there been notable changes in this regard. - And in that sense, in addition to ending the Vietnam War, the protest movement of the '60s really changed our consciousness. - The country totally changed. - And the behavior of governments changed, what they had to do to get what they wanted. - Yeah, I mean, this is a good time to talk about it.

This month, March 2002, coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy administration's public announcement that it would send American pilots to bomb South Vietnam. That's an American bombing of South Vietnam. That was the beginning of chemical warfare to destroy food crops, which drove large numbers of people to concentration camps. There was no one there except the United States and South Vietnam, and that was a U.S. war against South Vietnam, publicly announced, without a hint of protest. Now, the war lasted for years before protests developed, but when they did, not only the anti-war movement, but also the civil society, human rights movement and other rising movements, it changed popular consciousness.

The country has just become much more civilized. No American president today could dream of doing that. And the same thing happens in many other areas. Let's go back to '62, there was no feminist movement, there was a very limited, extremely limited human rights movement, there was no environmental movement, that is, the rights of our grandchildren, there were no solidarity movements with the third world, there was no anti -apartheid. movement, there was no anti-sweatshop movement, meaning all the things we take for granted just weren't there. How did they get there? Was it a gift from an angel?

No, they got there through struggle, the common struggle of dedicated people, with others, because you can't do it alone, and they turned it into a much more civilized country. There is a long way to go, and it is not the first time it has happened, and it will continue. - I guess you think that when we focus on the heroes of the movement, that's a mistake, because it's really the anonymous heroes, the anonymous seamstresses or whatever in this movement that really make the difference. - They are the ones who do things. I mean, take, say, the civil rights movement.

When you think of the civil rights movement, the first thing you think of is Martin Luther King. King was an important figure, but he would have been the first to tell you, I'm sure, that he was riding the wave of activism. The people who were doing the work, who were leading the civil rights movement, were young SNCC workers, freedom riders, you know, people who were on the streets every day, getting beaten, sometimes killed, working constantly. And they created the circumstances in which Martin Luther King could come and be a leader. And his role was extremely important, and I'm not denigrating him, it's very important to have done it, but the people who were really important are the ones whose names are forgotten, and that's true of every movement that ever existed. - If the students saw this tape, how would you advise them to prepare for the future if they identify with the objectives you are putting on the table? - Be honest, critical, accept elementary moral principles.

For example, the principle that if something is wrong for others, it is also wrong for us. That kind of things. Understand the importance of the fundamental anarchist principle, that is, the prior illegitimacy of power and violence, unless you can justify it, which is not easy. It's their burden of proof, not yours. That's true, whether it's personal relationships within a family or international affairs, and beyond that, try to join together with others who share your interests to learn more and act responsibly to improve the world's many very serious problems, which are can do. . - There is an important element of bravery in this type of work, right?

And what does that courage entail? - Oh, you know, in a country like the United States, the level of courage involved is extremely low. I mean, if you're a poor black organizer in the inner cities, yeah, that takes courage, because you could get killed. If you are an educated, relatively well-off white person, the level of anger is minuscule. Just look at what other people face elsewhere. As I say, I just returned from Türkiye. I mean, the people of the southeast, who live in a dungeon, are millions. They show real courage when they wear Kurdish colors, let's say, or openly speak, let's say, Kurdish as a language.

They could end up in a Turkish prison or worse, and that's no fun. But let's even go to Istanbul, you know, a little more Western. I actually went there for an impeachment trial. The government was prosecuting an editor who had published a couple of my sentences about the repression of the Kurds. Well, in Istanbul, writers, prominent writers, journalists, artists, intellectuals and others constantly carry out civil disobedience. Like when I was there, they purposely co-published The Book of Forbidden Writings, writings of imprisoned people, which are prohibited, they co-published it, I went to the prosecutor, I went with them, demanding to be prosecuted.

That's no joke. Some of them have been in prison, others will return to prison, they face repression. But they don't make a big fuss about it, they just do it with their normal behavior, without waving flags and saying, "Look how brave I am." This is life. That takes courage. Compared to what they face every day, what we face is so pathetically small that we shouldn't even talk about it. Yes, unpleasant things can happen, but not compared to what is happening in the world. - Going beyond science, and the level of complexity in that field that can be understood in the field of linguistics, I am curious to know if this explains what I think I detect is a moderate or almost conservative view, on your part. how much things can change in the short term.

I don't know if that's a fair comment about you, but is it like that, that somehow, seeing so much, you understand that sometimes very little can be achieved but it can be very important? - Very important, and I also don't think we should give up long-term visions. So I agree with the Lowell factory girls in 1850. I believe that wage slavery is an attack on fundamental human rights. I think those who work in the plants should own them. I think we should fight against what was then the new zeitgeist. "Gain wealth, forgetting everyone but yourself." Yes, all of that is degrading and destructive, and in the long term, I don't know how long, it should be dismantled.

But as it goes, there are serious problems to address right now, like three million Americans who don't have enough to eat, or people in other parts of the world who are much worse off and who are, in fact, under our boot . You know, we're grinding them into powder. Those are short-term things that can be addressed. Now, there is nothing wrong with making small profits. Just like the achievements I talked about before, from the 60s to today, they are extremely important for human lives. It doesn't mean that there aren't many mountain peaks to climb, there are, but you do what you can.

The same in science. You may like to solve problems of the causes of human action or something, but the problems you work on are ones that are right on the edge of your understanding. In fact, there's a famous joke about a drunk under a streetlight and someone walks up to him and asks, looking at the ground, "What are you looking for?" He says, "I'm looking for a pencil I dropped." They say, "Well, where did you leave it?" He said, "Oh, I dropped it across the street." "Then why are you looking here?" "Well, this is where the light is." You know, that's how science works.

I mean, maybe the problem you'd like to solve is across the street, but you have to work where the light is, then you try to move it a little further, and maybe you finally get across the street. And the same goes for human affairs. I mean, I think the same thing happens in personal relationships, when you have a problem with your kids, that's the way you have to deal with it. - One last question, and I understand your unwillingness to focus on heroes or to become heroes, but if an activist is watching this interview, what lesson could they take from your life about what they can do in their life, regarding a What are the issues that concern you? - Last night, for example, I gave a talk in Berkeley to a large crowd of people about the United States, the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, and so on.

Who is responsible for that talk? I didn't, you know, I flew from Boston and came and gave a talk. Those responsible for it are the people who work on it. The people who work day in and day out to create the organizational structures, the support systems, to go back and forth to work with the oppressed there, and their names may not be recorded in some registry, but they are the ones who run everything. I walk in and it's my privilege to be able to join them for an hour, but that's easy. Get up and give a talk, it's no big deal.

But working at it day in and day out, all the time, is hard, it's important and that's what changes the world. Not someone who comes and gives a talk. - Noam, thank you very much for joining us today for this fascinating discussion about at least some aspects of your life and work. Thank you. - Thank you. - And thank you very much for joining us in this conversation with history. (brilliant music)